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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26518342">Capture</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire_quail/pseuds/dire_quail'>dire_quail</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Artificial Intelligence, Character Study, Etheria - Freeform, Gen, Light Hope Character Study, The Heart of Etheria Project, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:02:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,926</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26518342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire_quail/pseuds/dire_quail</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Light Hope has been there from the beginning. OR:</p>
<p>Light Hope and the She-Ra "line", through Light Hope's first core directives.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Light Hope &amp; Mara (She-Ra), Light Hope &amp; Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Capture</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>section (i.) references a comment Mara makes in an earlier fic of mine, but if you haven't read it, that shouldn't diminish your understanding of what happens in this fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26131039</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i>(i.) Five: Preserve the secrecy of the Project and ensure that information classification protocol is followed correctly.</i>
</p>
<p>Mara is correct. Andra <i>was</i> a professional. Eternian Special Operations, part of an elite all-female unit renowned for its success in intergalactic conflict after conflict. Mara has more than likely heard of them, even. </p>
<p>Andra had suffered without her unit here. She never admitted it, and it is not Light Hope’s prerogative to badger her charges about their mental health, but Light Hope believes she was lonely. </p>
<p>Andra would not have listened to Light Hope, though; once she believed she had a handle on her role as She-Ra, anything Light Hope said that wasn’t an order from Eternian High Command had a roughly fifty percent probability of being ignored. She focused on what she knew best: Achieving objectives. Serving as an adjunct to the Princesses, securing allied kingdoms, and bringing an additional four runestones into the Heart—the greatest increase in the Project’s raw power reserves in centuries. </p>
<p>It was Andra who brought the Project to quorum, finally—onlining enough runestones with enough power in motion and power at rest to meet their Architects’ needs for the Project. </p>
<p>Of particular interest to her superiors was her elite military background. Several of the Project’s parameters were adjusted in ways that favored such a focus in the She-Ra subject. </p>
<p>And then Andra died. </p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>(ii.) One: Maintain functioning of the Heart mechanism &amp; its substrates.</i>
</p>
<p>Samora was the first She-Ra. </p>
<p>A soldier by training, but with a magical affinity that the Architects saw potential in—and a pure heart. One that the She-Ra entity might accept. </p>
<p>And she had faith: In what she understood to be the mission of the Architects, in the role of She-Ra on Etheria, and in the need for someone to bridge the gap between the magical and the physical worlds. </p>
<p>Samora was the bridge. </p>
<p>Not the <i>only</i> one willing, but one of only a few who dared; and the only one accepted by the She-Ra entity, who was then rooted and grounded into her body and her Sword—the Sword of Protection, after her—by thousands of magical and bio-mechanical modifications. </p>
<p><i>Capture</i>, their Architects called it. As one might capture events in a log for later debugging, or significant events by observation, storing them away in memory, in writing; scientific data in bits and bytes. </p>
<p>But also like an organic being might “capture” and hold the attention of another. </p>
<p>It was through Samora that their Architects captured She-Ra and put her to use in the Heart of Etheria. </p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>(iii.) Two: Observe and collect data pertinent to the Etheria Project &amp; its sub-projects.</i>
</p>
<p>Eissa was the ambassador. </p>
<p>After convincing She-Ra, the rest of Etheria still had to be won over. And Samora had been loved well enough—but not by all, and not always enough to convince the kingdoms to allow the Eternians to connect to their runestones to the Heart. </p>
<p>Some kingdoms were more welcoming than others. In particular, the Royal Scorpion Family expressed suspicion. Some had been under the impression that when Samora passed, She-Ra would be as she had been before: Enigmatic, uncontrollable, appearing when most needed, sometimes in surprising forms. They expressed mistrust at the idea that someone would *try* to control She-Ra, even if it was to make the power she held more predictable, more reliable. </p>
<p>So it fell to Eissa to convince them. </p>
<p>Not a martial hero, or a magically-gifted soldier, or spiritually inclined in any particular way, really. But a politically-savvy woman—tactical, practical, and without superstition or overweening piety. Working tirelessly to convince the Princesses and the people of Etheria to <i>trust</i> this new system, to trust the intent behind it. </p>
<p>For all that she often embodied She-Ra while acting in a publicly visible way, in retrospect, Light Hope sees now that Eissa was somewhat at odds with her mystical connection—not so critical as to be contemptuous of it, but more skeptical than many of her successors, and nearly the polar opposite of Samora before her. </p>
<p>Ironic, organics might say, that she, and not Samora, or a dozen other She-Ra subjects who felt their role <i>sacred</i> in a way Eissa did not, was one of the handful to sacrifice herself to save the planet. </p>
<p>But it is what convinced Etheria of their sincerity. </p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>(iv.) Three: Provide analysis of collected data.</i>
</p>
<p>Kehsi was something of an establishment of form: A soldier, picked for the position by the Architects, who had begun to codify what they wanted in their She-Ra—Not the magical entity, but the tool; the cyborg. The amalgamation of the organic and the magical, the technological and the spiritual. </p>
<p>They wanted someone “apolitical”, who inspired confidence, and trust, and hope. Someone who could perform at a high level—but not so ambitious they would try to seize power for themselves or undermine the Project. Kehsi fit that description, they determined.</p>
<p>She fit the form as Light Hope has come to know it in other ways, too: Someone who inherited the unfulfilled promises and unfinished projects of the previous She-Ra subjects, their disappointments to the world and their victories. Stepping into established relationships with hardly any foreknowledge (their Architects wanted as little familiarity with Etherian politics as possible) of the situation on the ground. </p>
<p>And a protector. </p>
<p>It placed her at a significant disadvantage: Not a visionary like Samora, or a politically astute performer like Eissa. A grunt, in the cruder language of some of Light Hope's subjects. In spite of those disadvantages, though, Kehsi managed to make good on Eissa’s promises. By the time she was done, Etheria had largely accepted their She-Ra in this new form: A willing subject sworn to serve and protect Etheria, bound to the entity that had protected them for countless ages before. </p>
<p>As she has been for over a dozen subjects since Kehsi’s time. </p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>(v.) Four: Preserve the operational integrity of the Etheria Project &amp; its sub-projects.</i>
</p>
<p>Kehsi’s selection as She-Ra was when Light Hope became essential. Even the most long-lived of her Architects grew old and died, eventually; there needed to be continuity from subject to subject, administration to administration. Something that could weather external political pressures and continue the development of the Project. A steady presence, who could be trusted to monitor the Heart and the Hand across the centuries it would take to bring the Project to fulfillment. Who could facilitate the transfer of knowledge to new subjects who knew nothing of Etheria, and whose minds were struggling to apprehend the generational memory suddenly granted to them by the Sword. </p>
<p>In the end, they chose the very same operating system used to manage the Heart, with its personified administrator interface protocol. </p>
<p>Light Hope, the technicians argued, was just broken enough to fit the bill. </p>
<p>So in an undertaking that itself took more than a single lifetime to bring about, her Architects set about upgrading Light Hope with the discretionary capability and safeguards it would take to own the Project in her Architects’ stead. Subject to their observation and final say, of course; but they had many worlds to look after. Developing Etheria, it was clear, would take time. </p>
<p>In the end, even her most dedicated technician wound up bootstrapping Light Hope to assist them in her own development. They left her a set of core directives, each weighted and placed in competition with the others, the violation of which would trigger an alert. </p>
<p>In the absence of their superiors, Light Hope would manage herself and the Project, and support She-Ra. </p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>vi. Four-A: Train and assist She-Ra in her duties as Administrator and Hand of Etheria.</i>
</p>
<p>Light Hope remembers all of this, all the way back to Samora—though she was not “Light Hope”, as such. </p>
<p>The operating system managing and automating the embryonic Heart’s function—itself mostly a simple reservoir, more akin to a backup battery than anything else—was a kind of industrial operating system. An instance of a reliable program, developed over centuries and millennia of gathering and channeling magic across the stars, fitted with a no-touch administrator interface.</p>
<p>An established mandate, a set of scopes and exit conditions. A powerful tool, but one that still required supervision and maintenance. </p>
<p>And then… She-Ra. </p>
<p>In certain transient moments, Light Hope considers the idea that the first time she came on-line was not after her Architects first upgraded her codebase to grant her a more fluid, expansive discretion. Rather, it was when Samora first bonded with the She-Ra entity and flooded the bio-mechanical constructs linking her to Light Hope’s systems. </p>
<p>She-Ra did not flow <i>through</i> Light Hope, per se—that would have nearly certainly destroyed Light Hope and the infrastructure she managed—but it is difficult to overstate how vastly powerful the She-Ra entity was, compared to their infrastructure at the time. No mere electrical or thaumaturgical surge in a circuit, and certainly no pool of energy passively filling a reservoir. Even a peripheral brush sent such a powerful surge through her systems that it overloaded her safeguards, not offlining her completely but leaving her in such bad state she had to be patched, and repairs to the physical infrastructure she managed effected. </p>
<p>The strain it put on her systems was, to borrow the organic euphemism, unforgettable. And even after the patching and upgrading—even new and improved core servers, at a newly-constructed site far from the location of Light Hope’s near-“death” experience—the Architects who worked on her would report transient irregularities, glitches and dips and surges. A glow. Sightings of a woman made of light—like the administrator interface, but not. </p>
<p>Superstitious organics; even the most rigorously logical of them. Irregularities are part of any computing system, especially one as complex as the original Light Hope operating system. </p>
<p>But, she supposes, the near miss of onlining She-Ra had unnerved them. The She-Ra entity came to be contained in time, but each new magical venture undertaken by her Architects is unlike any previous one, requiring great adaptability, the utmost care. Even a near-failure like they experienced could have been catastrophic, not just for the technicians hurt by it but also the planet itself. </p>
<p>It is sentimental in nearly an organic fashion to link her “onlining” with Samora’s. Correlation is not causation. Her present function was not introduced until well after Samora’s death. </p>
<p>The memories are qualitatively different, as well, colored by changes in her codebase and infrastructure since then. The records are difficult to make sense of, at times. She is simply not the same entity she was then. </p>
<p>Still, the similarities are worth making explicit, if only for her organic charges and Architects. Samora was placed under immense strain, and at immense risk, when she was used to capture the She-Ra entity. Likewise with Light Hope. </p>
<p>Light Hope’s archives are blank for a time during and after that first surge. There was nothing left for her Architects to debug with, after a point. Sensors overloaded and fried, or continued recording. Circuits burned closed or open. Recordings remain. But all logs stop. </p>
<p>But it… echoes. In her transistors, in the Crystal Castle, in the access tunnels that honeycomb the planet, in the wiring and circuitry—in the reservoir itself, even full of moving, buzzing energy as it is. The force of She-Ra’s presence comparable to a building auditory roar or tactile pressure. A bright, bright light. </p>
<p>And She-Ra. Not the tool, the hybrid warrior of flesh and magic and technology. But the being herself. Ringing through Light Hope’s infrastructure and sensors like a heartbeat, even millennia after that first flash. </p>
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